Back in 1944, Lord Mountbatten succeeded in getting Mao Tse- tung's signature on a promise to extend the British lease on Hong Kong for another hundred years if Mao came to power in China. Now, with the months ticking down on the original lease, a race is on for the last surviving copy of the Chungking Covenant. Sound familiar? It's a virtual rehash of Higgins' last, Thunder Point (1993)—but don't tell that to stalwart, nondescript Brigadier Charles Ferguson or his dashing one-time IRA enemy and present right- hand man Sean Dillon, fresh from thwarting an assassination attempt against the American President in London. (This preliminary plot winds down so rapidly that you just know the assassins weren't really trying.) Now Ferguson and Dillon are detailed to retrieve the Chungking Covenant from among the personal effects of its late courier, Major Ian Campbell, so that the Prime Minister can burn it before it throws the Hong Kong political situation into chaos. Meantime, though, Palermo's capo di tutti capi, Don Giovanni (!), gets wind of the document and, determined to extend the season on the Mafia's Hong Kong resort interests, deputizes his polo-playing, construction mogul nephew Carl Morgan and Morgan's stepdaughter Asta to grab the Covenant before Her Majesty's authorities can destroy it. The Morgans lease Campbell's manor house from his elderly sister, Lady Katherine Rose; Ferguson, Dillon, and Inspector Hannah Bernstein lease the adjoining hunting lodge. Now begins a battle of wits and nerves, with each side cultivating the other's matey acquaintance and assiduously leaking disinformation about its plans. By the time Lady Katherine suddenly remembers what really happened to her brother's personal effects, the stage is set for one of Higgins' kitchen sink finales, with the principals scuba diving, stealing, kidnapping, parachuting, and assaulting their way into your hearts still again. Nowhere near the top of Higgins' form, but his hordes of devoted fans won't mind this dog-and-pony show one more time. (Book-of-the- Month-Club Main Selection)
Pub Date: March 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13933-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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